Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Bill O'Reilly has got me pegged

Media Matters has an adorable clip of Bill O'Reilly foaming at the mouth about the idea that people in power (or pople who get health care or the food they need) could be something other than white Christians. From Media Matters:

During the May 16 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly claimed that The New York Times and "many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad, so a drastic change is needed." O'Reilly continued: "According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will." O'Reilly's comments came during a discussion of opposition by the Times and others to deploying the National Guard to help secure the border.

Doesn't sound so bad to me.

What I find to be brain-meltingly frustrating about arguing with people like this (see also here - and FYI I post on Plastic as yellownumber5) is that they seem to think that it's merely a coincidence that it's white Christian dudes who have snapped up the majority of the positions of power and the majority of the wealth in the world. Given that we do know about some blatant and some less blatant instances of bias - racism, sexism, etc - and that we don't know of any reason why white Christian dudes should be a lot better off than the rest of the inhabitants of this planet, the "it just so happens" mentality seems pretty fishy to me.